"John Pipkin's brooding first novel, Woodsburner, starts on the morning of April 30, as Henry David [Thoreau] squats on the bank of Fair Haven Bay and strikes a match he bummed from a shoemaker. The novel ends that evening, as the blackened forest glows in the darkness and soot snows down on the town of Concord. Over the course of this momentous day, Pipkin moves back in time and across the Atlantic, describing several other characters whose lives are lit by their own fires and altered by Thoreau's conflagration. The ingenious nature of this structure grows clearer with each haunting chapter. The fire that 'flows like brilliant liquid' through Concord Woods is a natural engine for a terrifically exciting story, and Pipkin conveys such a visceral impression of the 'clever flames crouching in the branches' that you can feel the heat radiating off these pages.... But just as captivating are those characters Pipkin has invented, men and women consumed by their own passions. They provide a fascinating impression of the nation when it was still young and swelling and struggling to define itself. They see the Concord fire through their own private flames—fire is everywhere in this novel—and Pipkin allows them to brush up against each other in the most subtle and ingenious ways."—Washington Post